http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071018_gouging_grandma/
Gouging Grandma
By Marie Cocco
Truthdig: Oct 17, 2007
WASHINGTON-With all the waste, fraud and abuse to be uncovered in
government, it's hard to get excited about exposing the first, relatively
innocuous member of this unholy trio. But then, you have to recall that a
big point of creating the Medicare drug benefit as it was crafted by the
Republican Congress in 2003 was to build in enough waste to pay off the
insurance companies and drug manufacturers for their years of loyal campaign
contributions.
That's why elderly people, who are used to getting insurance directly from
Medicare, were forced to buy their drug coverage from private insurers and
to navigate a sea of competing marketing claims and coverage options to get
their prescriptions.
And it's why Rep. Henry Waxman-who is busy enough plumbing the unfathomable
depths of malfeasance in Iraq-is right to get beyond the government's own
account of how well the Medicare drug plans are working and probe just how
much more that elderly beneficiaries and taxpayers are forking over because
lawmakers refused to let Medicare patients buy their prescriptions directly
from Medicare.
No question the drug program has met its basic goal: Millions of elderly
people who previously had no insurance coverage for their prescriptions now
are covered. But at what price?
Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which
Waxman chairs, tallied administrative and marketing costs-as well as
profits-of private Medicare drug plans and found them to be six times higher
than the administrative costs of the broader Medicare program, which covers
hospital and outpatient care. If insurance-industry middlemen were cut out
and if the administration of the drug benefit were turned over to Medicare,
Waxman's committee calculates, the savings would amount to $3.9 billion this
year.
But that's only one form of the gouging embedded in the drug program.
Private insurers also have failed to obtain the deep discounts on drugs that
are achieved by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Medicaid and even
Pennsylvania's state program for helping the elderly with prescriptions. By
law, pharmaceutical companies must offer Medicaid drugs at the lowest price
that manufacturers offer any customer; the VA demands prices below
wholesale.
The government programs that purchase drugs directly are negotiating exactly
the way Wal-Mart does: by demanding the lowest price in exchange for giving
the manufacturer access to a huge base of customers. The Waxman panel
estimated that if Medicare obtained the same rebates on prescriptions as
does the Medicaid program for the poor, the savings to taxpayers and
beneficiaries would be $10.7 billion.
Republicans on the committee protest. "Clearly, any comparison between
negotiated rebates obtained by [Medicare drug benefit] providers and other
government-run programs is not a comparison between like programs," they
said in a report meant to counter the Democrats.
Well, yes. That's the point.
The complex, private drug program that has dozens and dozens of insurers
negotiating for relatively small groups of their own beneficiaries is less
efficient and more costly than the direct, government-administered programs
that negotiate for a much larger pool of patients.
A study by the Commonwealth Fund, a private health care research group,
concluded that elderly people who obtain their prescriptions through
Medicare are not only paying more compared with those covered by the VA,
they're paying more compared with those who still are covered by their
former employers.
"The odds of (Medicare) enrollees spending at least $300 per month on
medications were more than twice those of seniors with employer-sponsored
coverage and more than three times those of seniors with VA drug benefits,"
the researchers concluded in an August study. The chances of a Medicare
prescription drug beneficiary going without medication, or delaying having a
prescription filled, were about twice those of the elderly still in
employer-based plans. Among those most affected, the researchers conclude,
are elderly people with "multiple chronic illnesses," who are "spending
significantly more out of pocket" for their many medications if they're
enrolled in the Medicare drug plan.
Democrats who took over Congress this year should have undertaken a complete
rewrite of the drug benefit. But with the president having forced a
political showdown even over the extension of the popular State Children's
Health Insurance Program, the timing is inauspicious.
The task will fall to the next president and the next Congress to revamp the
Medicare drug program so that its mission is not to prop up pet industries,
but to get medicine to the elderly cheaply. Otherwise they shall be known by
this slogan: Wasteful is as wasteful does.
Marie Cocco's e-mail address is mariecocco(at)washpost.com.
***
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 3:44 AM
Subject: [PDLA] Final Weekend to Build Oct. 27 Anti-War Protest -
Organize a Group to March
Please Circulate Widely.
Dear Progressives,
End the War Now, a broad coalition of activist groups in Los Angeles has
come together to promote, endorse, and participate in the Oct. 27, noon,
anti-war march at Olympic and Broadway.
The main message of the march will be -- Bring the Troops Home Now!
If your Dem Club, union, or other group hasn't already endorsed this mass
protest, please consider doing so and organize a group of marchers with
banners and signs. Join Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles when we meet
on the NE corner of Olympic and Broadway, with huge 14-feet banners that
say, "The Ultimate Objective of All Nations Must be the Total Abolition of
War" (MLK) and "Do Not Attack Iran."
Though the regional demonstrations were initiated by ANSWER and United for
Peace and Justice, the LA Coalition includes a vast array of organizations.
(scroll for the list)
Let us never underestimate the importance of bodies in the street demanding
an end to the carnage. Implicit in such a protest, in a strong turn-out, is
the sense that the people are on the move and not willing to accept their
government's war crimes. In former Pres. Nixon's
memoir, Nixon wrote that he wanted to drop nuclear bombs on Vietnam but was
afraid the marchers in the street would march right into the White House and
usurp his power.
Please be in the street -- Sat., Oct. 27, noon, Olympic and Broadway.
Thanks so much,
Marcy Winograd, Pres., Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles
Final Weekend to Build Oct. 27 Anti-War Protest
Join us to Make the Final Push!
Help with Visibility, Paint Banners, Make Signs & More
Saturday, Oct. 20, 11-5pm
Sunday, Oct. 21, 11-5pm
137 N. Virgil Ave, #201, Los Angeles
Map and Directions Public Transportation
This is the last weekend before the mass Oct. 27 anti-war protest in LA.
Join us on Saturday and Sunday to keep the anti-war momentum going strong.
Help us make this weekend a productive one in the lead up to Oct. 27.
We'll meet at the ANSWER office at 11 am to send out visibility teams across
the city on Saturday and Sunday. We'll also paint banners and make phone
calls to people about Oct. 27. The office is located at 137 N. Virgil Ave,
#201, LA. It will be open from 11am to 5 pm both days this weekend.
Spend the afternoon donating your time to the anti-war cause. Come in this
weekend and click on the links below to get involved.
* Volunteer Before & On Oct. 27
* Organize Transportation
* Endorse LA Protest
* Download Flyer ANSWER Flyer
* List of Organizing & Transportation Centers
For more info call 213-251-1025 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Endorsers include Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Ron Kovic, Vietnam
veteran; Veterans for Peace-LA, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles,
Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains, LA Green Party, First
Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, American Friends Service Committee,
Fernando Suarez de Solar, Guerrero Azteca, Addicted to War, Peace
Bakersfield, Montrose Peace Protest, NELA Radical Neighbors for Peace
through Justice, Committee in Solidarity with the People of Iran, Palestine
Aid Society, Stop the War Machine-Albuquerque, USC Students for Justice in
Palestine, Free Iraq Now, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, LA
Coalition for Equal Marriage Rights, Peace and Freedom Party-LA & OC,
Working Democracy, Chicanoforums, Clothing of the American Mind, Americans
for a Dept. of Peace and many others.
PDLA mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://mailman.svpal.org/mailman/listinfo/pdla
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